He's 87, my dad-dude, a tall and still-handsome white-haired guy who wears two hearing aids. Let's just note from the start that he's close to deaf, and his hearing aids are no help in a place like an airport, where the background noise is a roar. He reports that he can hear the roar with perfect clarity.

And while he may have lost most of his hearing, he has not lost his contrary propensity to question authority in a quiet way designed to make his target feel stupid. Well, at least if the target has any sense.

Lately, he's focused on the officers of the Transportation Security Administration, the folks charged with keeping bombers off airplanes. He has been seeing quite a bit of the TSA because we've been flying back and forth to his sister — "The Aunt" to all the nieces and nephews — who lives near Pittsburgh. At 90, she's another one that you wouldn't want to antagonize, but that's a column for later.

What's got the dad-dude, whose real name is Sam, worked up at the airports are the signs the TSA posts stating that those above the age of 75 don't have to take off their shoes for screening. Maybe they think all old people wear floppy tennies, but the dad-dude's favorite pair have metal. So every time he goes through the screening, an alarm goes off, and an officer makes him remove his shoes. And every time he feels compelled to test the TSA. Sometimes, he spots them a few points by warning them ahead of time that his shoes have metal.

It got to be a ritual for a while, ending with him throwing his hands up and remarking to the TSA person: "Hey, something's not right here."

I caught on and instituted preventative measures for the sake of passengers behind us.

"Take off your shoes," I'd tell him when we were still far back in the line.

Silently, he'd point to the sign.

"I don't care what it says. Let's just get through this."

Now, that I have pre-empted trouble on that front, I figured that we'd start getting through without the standard full body search of the dude. As usual, I was wrong. It took two more flights for me to figure it out, the most recent one earlier this week when he left for Pittsburgh again.

At the screening point, I hollered into his best ear that he needed to take off his shoes and get everything out of his pockets. Everything.

"I got nothing in my pockets," he insisted, fishing both hands around in his front pockets in a pantomime of turning them inside out.

This would have been a little fib. He had a big fat wallet in his back pocket.

Then I remembered that the same thing happened on a flight coming out of Pittsburgh last month, and it suddenly hit me: There is not a chance that he'll ever put his wallet in that scanning machine. He is convinced that it will disappear from the moving belt or that someone will pick it up on the other side if he can't get there quickly enough. That baby is staying buttoned securely into his back pocket. I don't even want to know how much money is in his wallet. Let's just say he never got the memo that America has become a cashless society.

I watched while he played dumb again as the TSA put on the full search reserved for noncompliant passengers who ignore instructions. You'd think they'd look in the offending wallet and call it a day. But, no. Common sense doesn't play much of a role in airport security.

I thought back to the flight last month when I got to poke a little fun at the TSA in the Steel City for the Class A Terrorist search of the same stooped old guy whose belt is still cinched tight to hold up his drawers. Oh, yeah, those guys take down planes all the time.

A woman about my own age had seen what was happening and thought it silly too. She asked what was going on. Rather loudly, I said, "Yeah, that's my 87-year-old father they're searching. He's probably on that feared 80-plus terrorist list."

The lady played along, asking questions that provided an opportunity to draw other passengers into the tableau and point up how preposterous such a search was. (OK, I admit I enjoyed it. I am my father's daughter, after all.)

Ironically, however, the TSA was right in a way — my dad does know a little bit about planes being used as flying bombs.

He was aboard the U.S.S. Idaho battleship during a massive attack on Okinawa on April 11, 1945, when six Japanese kamikazes took aim and dived toward the decks. Anti-aircraft fire took out five of them, but the last one slammed into the port side of the Idaho.

The battleship, a veteran of landing after landing in the Pacific, sailed to Guam for repairs and was back in Okinawa four weeks later. My dad still was aboard when she steamed triumphantly into Tokyo Bay on Aug. 27, 1945, and anchored there during the signing of the World War II surrender.

I'm sure the dad-dude didn't hear a word any of the TSA officers said while two of them scolded him as they conducted that thorough search in Pittsburgh and the little drama was playing out on the side. Like I said, he hears hardly at all. That's because his job during battle was to pass shell after shell from below the decks of the Idaho to gunners above while the firing went on and on just a few feet from his head. The Navy in those days didn't bother with the niceties of ear plugs.

Let's hear your stories about the TSA and flight travel.

Lritchie@tribune.com. Lauren invites you to send her a friend request on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/laurenonlake.